PDA

View Full Version : San Jose - Vigilante charged with murder




Brian4Liberty
01-04-2013, 01:36 AM
No reason for Al Sharpton to come out on this one, but it has a bit of a similarity to the Zimmerman case, specifically, crimes in the area, and wrestling with a gun. They don't say whether the suspect was engaged in breaking into vehicles when the "vigilantes" (i.e. employees) caught him.


http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_22305260/san-jose-vigilante-fatally-shot-man-suspected-burglaries

San Jose: Vigilante who shot man suspected of burglaries charged with murder

SAN JOSE -- It started as an act of vigilante justice by an apartment maintenance worker and his boss fed up with the lack of police response to a string of burglaries. But their attempt to detain a suspect on New Year's Eve ended with the worker purportedly committing the city's 46th and final homicide of 2012.

It is unclear what, if any, evidence the two had suggesting 36-year-old San Jose resident Christopher Soriano was responsible for the burglaries at the Summer Breeze Apartments near the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. Additionally, the gun Luis Ricardo Hernandez is accused of using to kill Soriano was illegally bought.
...
Sgt. Jason Dwyer, a spokesman for San Jose police, said he sympathizes with the fear some residents have felt in the midst of rising crime rates in the city, including a 20-year high in homicides. But he said those worries do not justify vigilante acts.

"We do not want people to start intervening because of the potential for violence," Dwyer said. "A lot of these suspects, they're career criminals who have been to prison and don't want to go back. This is what they do for a living. A lot of them will take you on."

Dwyer added: "People can do something, but this isn't it. Your life is not worth a piece of property that can be replaced."

Dwyer acknowledged lower-level crimes are necessarily given less priority than violent crimes, a far cry from a decade ago, and said officers are doing the best they can with what they have. That hasn't stopped some residents from lionizing Hernandez, fueled by frustration over slower police response times or no response at all for certain crimes, especially those involving property.
...
New details about the shooting were released Thursday as Hernandez, 26, is being held without bail in Santa Clara County Jail on suspicion of killing Soriano, who police and court records portrayed as a career criminal with a history of theft offenses.

According to police, Hernandez's maintenance supervisor at the apartments on Lewis Road noticed a truck pulling into a garage about 9:25 a.m. on Dec. 31 and remembered seeing it about the time of previous burglaries there. The supervisor said based on what he felt was inadequate police response to previous calls, he didn't believe officers would come, according to the report.

Fed up -- and having been a burglary victim himself -- he enlisted Hernandez's help to detain the driver, since identified as Soriano, until they could get police to show up, according to police. The supervisor is not being named by this newspaper because he has not been arrested or charged with a crime.

Police did not say whether Soriano was actively committing a burglary when he was confronted by Hernandez and his supervisor.

The two men told Soriano that they were going to hold him for police. Soriano started to leave, but Hernandez and the supervisor tried to pin him to the ground. Soriano broke free. Hernandez shot Soriano once with a handgun police say was not legally purchased.

Paramedics tried to revive Soriano but he was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the fight started. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner's Office conducted an autopsy the next day and concluded Soriano was shot from close range and "was likely on the ground or in a crouching position when he was shot."

Police say Hernandez admitted to shooting Soriano as he tried to get away, and expressed remorse, and also admitted to initially lying to officers about the circumstances of the struggle. Surveillance video captures some of the incident, including images of Hernandez wrestling with Soriano while holding a gun.

One legal expert said it appears Hernandez and his supervisor acted without much evidence -- beyond a strong suspicion.

"These people illegally restrained someone, in the course of which they wrongly used deadly force when they were not threatened," said Edward Steinman, a law professor at Santa Clara University specializing in criminal justice. "At most it was protecting property, but then you can only use non-deadly force."
...
San Jose police union President Jim Unland, who has long warned that understaffing in the police department would lead to crime spikes, echoed the warning against residents taking on criminals.
...
"I hope they learn there are serious consequences to taking matters into their own hands. They're not trained to do this. We are."

Brian4Liberty
01-04-2013, 11:31 AM
Obviously the complex did not have it's own security. If these guys had the job title of Security Guard instead of "maintenance", would there be charges? What if they were doing dual duty? If your boss asks/tells you to do something, is it part of your job? Who determines that?


http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Murder-charge-in-S-J-vigilante-shooting-4165780.php

Murder charge in S.J. vigilante shooting

(01-03) 16:36 PST SAN JOSE -- A San Jose maintenance worker who shot and killed an alleged repeat burglar while intending to make a citizen's arrest was charged with murder Thursday, authorities said.

Luis Ricardo Hernandez, 26, is accused of murdering 36-year-old Christopher Soriano at the apartment complex on Lewis Road where Hernandez works.

The incident started when Hernandez got a call Monday morning from his boss, Salvador Orozco Saldana, who had spotted Soriano driving a truck into the apartment complex's garage, according to a police statement included in Santa Clara County court documents released Thursday.

Saldana, a maintenance supervisor at the complex, believed Soriano had burglarized his and other apartments in the past, documents said. He didn't think police had responded promptly to the burglaries and had no confidence officers would show up this time, so he told Hernandez to help him make a citizen's arrest, police said.

Hernandez armed himself with a gun he told police he had bought illegally for self-defense, investigators said. When he and his boss tried to hold Soriano, however, the suspected burglar broke free and Hernandez shot him, police said.

An autopsy indicated that Soriano was shot from less than a foot away and was either lying on the ground or crouching when he was hit, according to the Santa Clara County medical examiner's office.

Surveillance footage from the garage shows Hernandez fighting with the suspect while holding a gun, according to police.

Soriano died at the scene at 9:55 a.m., authorities said. Saldana has not been charged with a crime.

Brian4Liberty
01-06-2013, 01:58 PM
Predictably, this incident has resulted in calls for more Police and bigger budgets. Failure is often rewarded, and is now a technique for getting bigger budgets.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Victims-Mom-Blames-SJPD-Staffing-for-Sons-Death-185655522.html

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/01/04/attorney-says-lack-of-sjpd-response-led-to-deadly-showdown/

Warrior_of_Freedom
01-06-2013, 02:03 PM
how can a gun be illegally bought?

oyarde
01-06-2013, 02:07 PM
Tragic accident, not sure how a prosector is going to convince a jury other wise. Especially if there is video of altercation and a weapon .How many thefts had this guy been convicted off ? Did the other two guys already know he was a thief ?

Brian4Liberty
01-06-2013, 02:28 PM
how can a gun be illegally bought?

Anything to push the anti-gun agenda. It probably means it was purchased from a seller who wasn't properly licensed, registered, tracked and taxed by the state. Kind of like anything you ever bought from a yard sale.

Brian4Liberty
01-06-2013, 02:41 PM
Tragic accident, not sure how a prosector is going to convince a jury other wise. Especially if there is video of altercation and a weapon .How many thefts had this guy been convicted off ? Did the other two guys already know he was a thief ?

They suspected he was. Obviously, whatever words were exchanged did not convince them he was a resident or innocent. Many similarities to the Treyvon Martin case. Just none of the mass media hysteria, or pretending that it is a racial issue. Stuff like this happens on a daily basis all over the world. What is unusual is when the media turns it into some kind of unique crisis.

Not sure which degree of murder they are charging him with. They will go for the maximum, just to set an example that mundanes better just sit there and take whatever the world dishes out to them. Call the Police and they will decide which crimes warrant an actual response from them. Otherwise, you better sit there and take it!